A word on Reform UK
Most progressive folks I know in the UK are really weary of Reform UK.
They’re also weary of PR because Reform would get maybe 15% of the seats.
Right now, in my heart, I see it a bit differently.
Privilege and supremacy. Class and reality; needs.
If we consider our experience of enough-ness, or access to resources, in a 1–5 scale — where 3 is having enough, 4 is more than enough, 5 is unlimited; 2 is less than enough and 1 is survival challenge:
Where are you now? Where have you been? And your lineage; your family, ancestors, and your friends?
This is a really useful approach I’ve learned from Daniel Foor’s course in recognising and dismantling supremacy.
Me, I’m a 3. Most of my friends and family, now and in previous generations are, I believe, 3–4. I was partnered with a millionaire for a few years so I was kind of by association (I lived with him) in 5 for a bit.
I recognise that I have blindspots to folks in groups 1 and 2. I don’t know many of them. I live among many of them I think here in Buckfastleigh which is a poor town, where local rural poor mix — or don’t mix — with musicians, activists and single parents. None of us are rich. Here we are.
I have quite a block to folks in 1 and 2. Instinctive unconscious — becoming conscious — barriers to befriending those folks. I other them I think, by carrying a wall to them around with me.
I’m not proud of this but I am now aware of it and curious about it. When I came back from America, the ways my consciousness of racism had developed there applied to class dynamics here in the UK. I would look at folks in groups 1 and 2 in London, really see them, and say to myself, “I could be you. I share my world, and this country, with you.” Now, after a few years here, I think I look away.
Recently, a friend who had been to Oxford described beaches to the east of where we were standing. “There’s this one, then that one — that’s the Muggle beach.” By ‘muggle’ he meant the beach where working class people go.
It’s supremacist language. It implies that we are superior to “the muggles”, more special, more unique, sparky, intelligent, free, quirky, more magical. Well, maybe access to education and free time and singing and dancing and cultural opportunities make us this way, and maybe by contrast folks in groups 1 and 2 get adapted to drudgery in a way that makes them less magical…..
I take a deep breath. I wonder how I would feel if I were called a Muggle by someone with much more access to resources and opportunity than me. It would bite. If they earned £45, or £65, or £200 an hour when I earned £15, or £20 an hour. If they and their “blow in” friends came and pushed up the cost of housing in the town where I and my family and my lifelong friends had lived for generations, and we all started moving out, and away, and our bonds withered, or weave un-wove. It would bite.
Life for Ollie and I is challenging, at 3. We cope, but I honestly don’t know how much modernity right now bites for folks in groups 2 and 1. I don’t know what that’s like. Independent candidate Arthur Price here in Central Devon talked intimately of the bite of poverty. The stress that hits you over the head in the morning when you wake. The people for whom 8pm is their favourite time of day, because it’s when they get to go to sleep.
I’m guessing that folks in groups 2 and 1 make up a lot of Reform voters. I care about them. I think about them. I worry about them. I wonder what measures would create more equality.
I’m guessing those folks wants a politics that centers them more. That takes their needs seriously and somehow brings opportunity and enough-ness back round to them. Folks from other countries, don’t take care of them first! Take care of us first.
They matter, and they know it, and they’ve been left behind by modernity, by progressive liberals, and all our lovely things and access to higher wages, and homes in their communities.
I think the real questions here for us are, what do we do about classism? What do we do about inequality? What do we do about neo-liberalism and housing issues?
A politics in service to all of life would not privilege one group over another. It wouldn’t privilege me and my degree and my international life and my 2 passports over the lady who cleans our home.
I could also say, a history that stole the common lands, that un-wove us from our communities of place and made us workers in an industrial revolution, consumers and producers, milking us like goats and shunting us around an industrial productivity system…. milked by capitalism…. profits extracted to shareholders and CEOs and piled up offshore
One of the questions for politics I think is, if we listen to the real needs of the folks choosing to vote Reform, how do we really take those needs on board?
So, back to PR, I am interested in a circular politics where everyone can be represented by someone they feel represents them, and then those representatives can circle up and listen to each other — really listen to each other — and together try to figure out what’s best to do. Not by knocking each other down with a gladiatorial big Q tip and saying, f**k you and the people who voted for you to represent them.
It’s time to unlearn that adversarial approach to politics and to start listening to the needs of all the people as we group up under political parties and representatives; and to have a PR voting system where we get proportionally represented, and we try to hear each other.
Usually, the more we listen to each other, the less we need to shout.
